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Could Saturday’s NBA playoff opener at the Air Canada Centre be any more of an embarrassment for the Raptors and the City of Toronto?

The only thing missing was Rob Ford juggling plates at halftime and then falling on to a coffee table.

In a drunken stupor, of course.

And the funny thing is, the least embarrassing part of the game was the Raptors losing to the Brooklyn Nets, 94-87.

At least the young Raptors team played hard and gave it their best shot.

Well, most of them. A search party is still attempting to locate DeMar DeRozan.

Raptors supporters often grumble that not enough Toronto games are broadcast on American network television.

And so it finally happens on Saturday and the game turns into a s--- show, starting with that cute “F--- Brooklyn” comment made pre-game by Toronto GM Masai Ujiri in Maple Leaf Square.

Ujiri apologized later for the remark, sort of.

“Wrong choice of words out there,” the GM said.

“It is really not about me. It is about the players and the playoffs.

“Just trying to get the crowd out there rattled — wrong choice of words,” Ujiri added.

“I apologize to kids out there and to the Brooklyn guys. Nothing against them. Just trying to get our fans going. That’s it.”

Now, I’m not going to sit here and be a hypocrite and dump on the personable and accomplished GM after hammering sports types over the years for dishing out boring cliche after boring cliche.

But what about that old canard in sports that you never give the opposition any ammunition, particularly in a playoff series?

Even though the Nets generally pooh-poohed Ujiri’s comment afterwards — head coach Jason Kidd said he doesn’t even know who the Raptors GM is — you know the Nets will use “F--- Brooklyn” as motivation going forward.

Hey, if you want your players to demonstrate some discipline in the playoffs, maybe you should demonstrate some yourself.

I wouldn’t be at all shocked if we discover that Brooklyn GM Billy King sent his Toronto counterpart a big box of Cubans today. (I’m talking about cigars.)

There were suggestions made that the comment was planned, perhaps a clever way to deflect attention away from his young team. And maybe it was. But I don’t buy it.

What NBA GM would want a “F--- Brooklyn” comment attached to his bio for the rest of his life?

I guarantee that if you google Masai Ujiri going forward, “F--- Brooklyn” will forever be there.

To their credit, most of the Nets laughed off Ujiri’s quip, while the Raptors applauded him for his “passion.”

But could you imagine, with our inferiority complex, if the shoe was on the other foot, if King uttered “F--- Canada” to a huge crowd stateside before the game? There’d be a collective nervous breakdown in the Great White North.

Remember when that U.S. Marine Corps Color Guard accidently carried the Canadian flag upside down during the 1992 World Series? That was an accident and everybody went kookoo bananas.

And then in the third quarter on Saturday, the shot clock went out at the ACC, prompting Raptors P.A. Herbie Kuhn to actually have to count down on the mic and then say “Horn” when a team’s 24 seconds was up.

Meanwhile, there was Herbie and Brigg Harvey, a Raptors game-ops guy, on ESPN TV throughout the second half keeping track of shot-clock possessions — Harvey actually sitting there with a stopwatch and air horn. (Turned out to be a power-fuse failure.)

If most of the visiting New York writers didn’t find that amusing enough, they weren’t exactly laughing over the fact that there was no audio on the giant TV in the media room during the game.

And nobody was impressed when the lights went out in the press room — and in the hockey press box — during a post-game Jonas Valanciunas interview. That wasn’t exactly a feather in anyone’s cap.

And finally, the piece de resistance, the avalanche of angry tweets from Toronto fans after the game, whining about how the Raptors got ripped off by the officials.

“I didn’t need to come up here for this,” said Buffalo News columnist Jerry Sullivan, taking in the anger and whining and conspiracy theories.